It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
Richard does a brilliant job of explaining the liberal pathologies behind the debt downgrade in his piece in Defining Ideas, summarized in his post below. But is this message getting lost in the Democratic/MSM campaign to label this the "Tea Party Downgrade?" I don't know, but this analysis in today's Daily News suggest that the Tea Party is in danger of losing the "debt message war."
So let's be clear. If anybody has to "own" this downgrade, it is the President. Yes, S&P focused on political paralysis, including on taxes, but by no means did S&P single out Tea Party resistance to tax increases. In fact, they devoted more ink to spending/entitlement reform:
We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling . . .indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.
Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.
In case you missed it: entitlement reform is the "key" to fiscal sustainability. Who demagogued entitlement reform out of the ballpark? Republicans? Tea Partiers? It was the Democratic Party -- the party that controls the Senate and the White House. The party led by Barack Obama. Obama claimed to be leading the debt ceiling negotiations and was quick to claim credit for the ultimate compromise. But even as he did so, he declared that entitlement reforms were off the table for the future:
I’ve said it before; I will say it again: We can’t balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession. We can’t make it tougher for young people to go to college, or ask seniors to pay more for health care, ...
If S&P despairs the possibility of the US enacting entitlement reform, it is because of the man who occupies the White House.
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Jul '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
I immediately tune out anyone who says we can't touch entitlements. It marks them as completely unserious about the root of the problem and nothing more than a political grandstander.
Jun '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
Obama's not even clever enough to stop attacking the only Americans that could give employment and the economy a significant boost in the near term--those "greedy millionaires." Instead, after listening to the President, they're wisely laying low.
Dec '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
You can't drive nails with kittens, and government was never intended to be the guarantor of economic well being for the entire nation.
Dec '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
You can't drive nails with kittens
WHERE did you come up with this?
May '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
Despite the stream of spin coming from the WH and the media, the problem with pinning the downgrade on the "Tea Party" is that it is not really a party. What influence they have is entirely based appearances and perceptions; they are a nexus for public emotions.
By declaring them a political force capable of forcing a President's hand they hand the Tea Party movement legitimacy and importance they might have struggled to achieve. What a gift.
The president has essentially declared that this amorphous Tea Party is (are?) the really effective counter to his policies, and as his policies become ever more unpopular, Republican candidates will fight to wrap themselves in the Gadsden flag.
Dec '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
The mystery is why did the Democrats, agains all logic, go on this spending spree? Rich Lowry has touched on, I think. "He thought he could spend as much as possible in his first two years, and a favorable business cycle and rhetorical repositioning would bail him out before 2012. He didn’t count on reality having different plans."
The Democrats are trying to run the Reagan playbook. But, they've got the play wrong. In their minds the busineess cycle just runs regardless of policy; certainly not the policy of "voodoo economics". So, all they had to do was move their agenda forward of vastly increasing the welfare state and the business cycle would take care of itself the way it did for the hapless but extremely lucky Reagan. What escapes their ken is that it was Reagan's policies that brought about the phenomenal recovery.
Dec '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
Foxman: You can't drive nails with kittens
WHERE did you come up with this? · Aug 9 at 10:51am
I was looking for the most shocking way to make someone understand the inseparability of form and function in a debate about something once and it struck me as the most vulgar mental picture of trying to divorce the two.
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
G.A. Dean:
By declaring them a political force capable of forcing a President's hand they hand the Tea Party movement legitimacy and importance they might have struggled to achieve. What a gift.
Excellent point.
Sep '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
For the Dems, that's a feature, not a bug. They can slander the "Tea Party" at will because there isn't any one person or organization to speak for the Tea Party as a whole. It makes a perfect scapegoat. And I fear that our side seems much too content to grump amongst ourselves about what a crock this "Tea Party Downgrade" talk is, when there is good reason to believe it will stick with the public at large.
There's been a bit of push-back on this point, but not nearly enough. I would hope that any candidate who expects the support of Tea Partiers would make some noise about this. Isn't there a debate somewhere on Thursday? Maybe somebody there might want to raise this flag? It's great that Ricochet has its act together, but we could use some high-profile reinforcement.
Aug '10
Re: It's the Obama Downgrade. Period.
I hear an awful lot of Democrats in the media parroting the "Tea Party downgrade." I also hear practically no one on the Republican side bothering to make much of a counterargument. You can't beat something with nothing.
How about these:
The problem wasn't the debate about the debt, it's the debt.
It wasn't the reluctance to raise the debt limit, it's the debt.
It wasn't the waiting until the last minute to give ourselves permission to take on more debt, it's the debt.
If anyone thinks S&P would have been more pleased had Obama got the "clean" debt limit bill that he wanted, they have no clue.
If anyone thinks there would have been a default if we didn't raise the debt limit, I've got a bridge to sell them.
If anyone thinks we can tax our way out of this by only touching those making $200,000 a year or more, they must have flunked basic arithmetic.